Mentor: Dr. Spike W. S. Lee
Project Description
Broadly speaking, our lab investigates
-(1) mental contents that matter for social life (e.g., moral intuitions, political orientation, subjective social class),
-(2) higher-order mental processes (e.g., judgment and decision-making, lay beliefs, metacognition),
often as they influence and are influenced by
-(3) bodily states (e.g., motor action, sensory experience) and
-(4) physical tools (e.g., smartphones, digital devices).
Along these lines, there will be multiple projects for you to choose from. For example, one project will be investigating how people’s social class shapes their assumptions about what they and others can accomplish in life. Another project will be examining how political liberals and conservatives differ in their motives and cognitive styles. Yet another project will be exploring when technology helps vs. hurts people’s ability to think. Whichever project you choose, you’ll be involved in developing your own hypotheses, crafting studies to test them, coordinating data collection, analyzing data, and writing them up for conference presentation or journal publication or both.
Mentorship Statement
I love mentoring students. I find tremendous meaning and fulfillment in it. I had great mentors throughout my own undergraduate and graduate training. Being able to cultivate students as they explore their goals and interests and experience doing scientific thinking and work is a big part of why I love my job. I’ve mentored a large number of students from diverse backgrounds–ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic.
If you join our lab, the first thing we’ll discuss is what your fundamental values and long-term aspirations are. From there, we’ll identify specific goals and concrete tasks we want to accomplish within a feasible timeframe during summer.
I was lucky to have benefited from similar opportunities to this when i was a student. I look forward to supporting you as a budding scholar and scientist.